Denver—In 2012, Denver recorded $2.58 billion in annual multifamily sales—the highest in the metro’s history—and the trend continues in 2013 as year-to-date volumes have already reached $1.3 billion. Today, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) announced the firm has hired one of the nation’s top apartment experts to manage the burgeoning pipeline of transactions in the Rocky Mountain Region. Industry veteran Mark Peppercorn joins the firm as a managing director, following more than two decades with Archstone Communities, a Denver-based apartment owner and developer. His arrival builds upon JLL’s goal to re-establish a strong Capital Markets platform in Denver, begun last week with the hiring of Patrick Devereaux and Jason Schmidt as office, industrial and retail investment sales experts.

Fueled by job growth in the oil and gas industries, professional and business services, education and healthcare, Denver’s economy and commercial real estate markets are on an impressive upswing, and the Rocky Mountain region is proving to be an attractive destination for investors’ dollars. Office demand will continue to accelerate throughout the rest of the year and into 2014, and speculative industrial construction has returned to the area. Furthermore, over the past year, apartment rents have grown nearly 4 percent in Denver, placing the metro area among the top 10 nationwide for that statistic. Buyers have taken notice: nearly 20 percent of Denver’s multifamily units have traded hands in the past 12 months.

Peppercorn joins JLL after two decades with Archstone and various affiliates of the firm. Most recently, he served as a Senior Vice President. Over the course of his career at Archstone, Peppercorn closed investment sales totaling more than $6.3 billion and 48,500 units in 22 metro areas. In between stints at Archstone, Peppercorn was the Director of Development for Glenborough-Pauls, LLC in San Francisco. Prior to joining an Archstone affiliate in 1993, he worked as a broker and a mortgage banking consultant in Houston. He has an M.B.A. from the University of Texas and a B.B.A. in Finance from Texas A&M University.